[Using the illness representation model to provide care for a patient with diabetic nephropathy]

Patients interpret illness through personal knowledge and experience, while illness representation guides patient attitudes with regard to seeing a doctor, accepting treatment and adopting healthy behavior. Nurses who understand the illness representation of patients may be better able to provide intervention in order to enhance patient self-care skills and ultimately improve patient health. This article describes a nurse's experience providing care to a patient with diabetic nephropathy. He suffered from decreasing urine output, lower limb edema and shortness of breath. He also underwent a role transformation from a healthy individual to hemodialysis patient. He interpreted hemodialysis to be the end of meaning in his life and as preventing his continuing to work and earn money. He thus rejected hemodialysis treatment. The authors applied the illness presentation model to understand the patient's perception of his illness, then helped the patient to correct his misconceptions about the hemodialysis treatment in order to change his illness representation of hemodialysis and guide him to accept his new role. After one month of care, the patient accepted arterio-venous shunt surgery and accepted that hemodialysis both mitigated his illness and improved life quality. The authors would like to share their report on this case to provide nursing professionals with a reference on one approach to improving healthcare quality.